Wednesday, May 09, 2007

Today saw the sad spectacle of Andre Boisclair's past-due resignation as leader of the Parti Quebecois. It's a sad day for federalists as well, since he didn't have the good sense (unlike Paul Martin Jr.) to resign promptly on election night; which only served to drive fresh nails into the the separatist movement's coffin with every day of pointless hesitation.

But perhaps saddest of all is this little piece of ugly journalism buried within the Gazette's political obituary of the man:

Boisclair faced tough questions over his admitted use of cocaine while a cabinet minister and, as Quebec's first openly gay political leader, also faced questions about his homosexuality during the election campaign.

(Emphasis mine) What a bizarre thing to say. While I agree about the cocaine part (heck, I called that one back in 2005), I am completely confounded about the rest of that sentence. What sort of questions did he face about his homosexulity, so craftily juxtaposed in the sentence structure here as to subtly equate it with cocaine use? Think about it. No one would write that he "faced questions about his orientalness" or: "his lack of legs", or: "his asthma", or what have you...

And all day that's been there. I would have thought some editor would have retracted that line by now but it's been there for at least 15 hours!Let's see if it makes it into the print version. I'm ashamed for them.

- 30 -

Update:(May 9, 09h23 EDT) The offending bit was not included in either Philip Authier's front page story, nor Hubert Bauch's analysis of the print version.